Research Article

Comparative Study of Automatic Machine Translation VS Human Translation: A Case Study of Four Surah of Holy Quran

Authors

  • Saba Sadia Lecturer, Department of English, University of Gujrat, Pakistan
  • Sibtain Bin Aslam PhD Scholar (English Language and Literature), Department of English, University of Gujrat, Pakistan

Abstract

Comparisons to human performance are often made in quite general and exaggerated terms. Thus, it is important to be able to account for differences accurately. This paper reports a simple, descriptive scheme for comparing translations, which is applied to four Surahs of the Holy Quran and compares the human translation with machine translation. The method applied for the study is qualitative. Within the qualitative domains, one of the four methods of assessment of translation has been adopted from Waddington (2001). The analysis is done on four parameters namely textual, syntactic, semantic, and social. The results obtained from the data confirm that human translation is far better and superior in comparison with the machine translation as human translation almost covers the four above-mentioned aspects. On the other hand, machine translation lacks and misses many important levels of translation and does not convey the true spirit of meaning from one language to another language. However, machine translation is quicker and faster as compared to human translation. It is concluded that machine translation is not as reliable, trustworthy, and dependable as human translation. This study has a future prospect for further studies with some limitations of human translation.

Article information

Journal

Journal of World Englishes and Educational Practices

Volume (Issue)

1 (2)

Pages

1-7

Published

2019-12-17

How to Cite

Sadia, S. ., & Aslam, S. B. . (2019). Comparative Study of Automatic Machine Translation VS Human Translation: A Case Study of Four Surah of Holy Quran. Journal of World Englishes and Educational Practices, 1(2), 1–7. Retrieved from https://al-kindipublisher.com/index.php/jweep/article/view/14

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Keywords:

Google translation, Bing translation, human translation, machine translation, translation error, stylistic devices, MT, CAT